Five Soft Spots
by blood sugar love
Summary: Ron without Hermione, or: How To Move Backward in the World of Emotion.
1. 5

It's been a long time, or what feels like a long time, at least for Ron - but he's not like anyone else when it comes to time, not any longer._ Everything_ feels like years, which means there's a lot of years, and he touches all of them one by one before going to sleep.

It's only been a problem as long as he's been able to admit it is, which has only been a few weeks. Before that, everyone thought they were imagining things. Ron did, too, until he realised he wasn't. He'd close his eyes and his mind would drift like a ship, black sails blue anchor, until he opened his eyes hours later. All that time gone - dead - and it's because of one moment far enough back, one soft spot that nobody can touch but Ron.

It comes to be that he opens his eyes and it's the night before Harry finally leaves for auror's training.

"Are you sure you won't come with me?" Harry wants to know.

Ron nods. He must have meant it, but his neck nearly breaks.

* * *

><p>Everyone comes to a bonfire down at the beach. <em>Goodbye<em>. There's food. Too many drinks, beery kisses and rants and soliloquys. Seamus is asleep on the step of Bill's cottage before midnight; Lavender has to shake him awake before apparating. Ron's brothers gamble with Dean and Neville for galleons and make mum upset. Harry disappears with Ginny for hours. Luna decorates a cake with Fleur and Gabrielle. They look like angels. Percy brought Cho Chang along as a new girlfriend, and her nails are blue. Ron doesn't ask questions. He talks to everyone, but the hole in their line of faces - the hole in him - is still too clear, and it leers, cuts him chin to stomach. He has to leave before his insides fall out. It's been this way for months, but it's getting better now. Ron can say that and it's true.

He goes to the beach again, where the water is dark like horses. He won't come back after he leaves Bill's this time, not till Christmas, when the ocean's not half so nice. Also true.

And another true thing is: Ron doesn't know what he's going to do now that he has to grow up, but he won't be with Harry, and that's why it won't come to him. He knows that's why. And it doesn't frighten him - just makes things difficult.

The sand is bare and cool; he thinks he can find the place he lay once, when they came here last summer. Maybe the imprint of his head is still there, cos it was heavy enough.

* * *

><p>"Would you like a piece of cake?" Luna asks.<p>

"No," says Ron.

"Look," she tells him. And he does. Red and gold and lion head roses that open their tiny mouths for the moon; but all around him, everything is silver. Luna's hair gleams, more alive than she is, and the henna on her hands looks like broken snakes. This time he looks in her eyes, and they're still as stones.

"This will make you happy," she suggests, smiling. "I know because I asked it to."

"It's not going to make me happy."

"Not if you tell it no."

Ron takes a bit of frosting with his finger. It tastes like peaches and ecstatic light. He tries to smile for her, but it's so much that he can't - his mouth stings with magic, lips burn with it. Luna stays a minute longer. She puts the cake down, then can't think what to do with her hands.

"Ron," she says.

"No."

* * *

><p>Now his head is heavy enough. There's that hole inside of him so big that he could put everyone in it, if they would just stand still.<p>

* * *

><p>Harry finds him again, once the party is over. Ron watches his dark head come down the beach.<p>

"Ginny?" He asks, stretching out his limbs in the sand. He could reach the stars in the water if he tried hard enough, but they pull him instead: heart by string. He wants to go pretend he knows their names, but Harry moves first. He's fidgeting, adjusting his glasses.

"Not with me. Luna?"

Then there's a smile; it's little and wan in this light. Harry moves to lie next to Ron after a moment, but pauses; then he sits very still, resting his chin against his scarred knees. Ron has to stop, try very hard not to say anything stupid. He closes his eyes desperately, but by now everyone knows not to let him do that anymore. Harry reaches forward and pinches his arm.

"Not now, Ron."

"I'm tired."

"Let's go home, then."

* * *

><p>And he lies in his bed just like on the beach. This time Harry lies next to him. When he closes his eyes, he can imagine that the weight belongs to someone else - and she would've been here, back to the wall, grinning at him in the dark. If Ron pictures it too clearly he can feel himself rotting at the edges. Soon his bark will peel away and there will be worms underneath. Lightning will strike and petrify him, but only the half that managed to live. He still has to picture the old grief like this; by now it's habit, like tending to a secret garden of stony trees.<p>

Between them he sees Harry. Harry looks tired, and young, like he always does without glasses: his eyes are just a little small, and his lashes too long, but his face falls truer. Ron can feel the edge of his breath under the blanket, warming him. He doesn't know what to do about it. The last time he can remember anything like this was in the tent: like another life, one he imagined to make up for what he's missing now.

But Harry shifts again before he has to think about it too long, remember too much; he turns his face down and all of that warmth blooms against Ron's heart instead.

"Harry."

"Yes?"

"I dunno," says Ron.

A funny thing is: Harry smells like Ginny. Under the scent of sand and surprisingly expensive soap is her candy rose perfume. Harry shouldn't smell like that. But Ron really doesn't care what he does with Ginny, or he doesn't think he does: not now, after everything.

"Do you love my sister?" He mutters without thinking. "Are you going to marry her?"

This is that stupid thing from earlier.

It always wins.

But Harry doesn't move. He sort of stiffens a little, like something's brushed up against him and he doesn't know what. After one, two, three breaths he lifts his face again, and his eyelashes touch Ron's lips. They laugh woodenly together as if it was just a joke, and half of him wants Harry to say _yes, I love her more than anything. I'll marry her next year._ Which is also true, as true as anything else - it's just not what Harry says. The other half of Ron wants him to say something else; he's holding his breath to hear it, straining for even a little warm piece of it, but that's not what he says either.

"You used to smell like someone, too," is what Harry says.


	2. 4

Three in the morning.

"Can't see nothing. Light up, will you?" But this is only after the third time Seamus nearly knocks over the lamp taking his shoes off. Then there's a fourth time, only he nearly knocks Harry down instead.

"Lumos," says Ron. It's supposed to be a whisper. It's the opposite.

They die laughing, almost; the wand sputters and the tiny light dies once, twice, three times. He smacks it against his thigh. Then Seamus puts a bottle up against his mouth and he stands there in the foyer of the apartment, grinning with wet teeth. They take turns until it's empty and disappears in someone's handbag on the coat rack.

"Shh?" Harry wonders. A part of him will always think there's some trouble to be avoided.

"Shh," Seamus assures him.

But Ron doesn't answer for a long moment. His throat burns, and he's laughing again (can't help it - why?) and then the lamp really does fall over (_somehow_) and Sea is laughing now too with a thick voice and they stumble into the hallway shh-ing and hissing. Harry is laughing loudest, till Ron puts a hand over his warm mouth.

"Silenci-o," he mutters, and then the drink hits him straight between the eyes. Everything does, and it's the way it always happens. How is he going to keep pretending to have fun? It's too difficult to keep up for long if no one falls asleep soon. Then Harry licks his fingers, clumsily sticks his tongue between them, and it's like he can feel everything right there on his chest, pushing him back into the grave: a fearful sadness, like the shadow of wings over an intelligent rabbit. He's back eight months again, can feel the wet grass on the backs of his ankles and thighs. Only this time the hand is alive when it clutches his heart.

"...Ron?"

"I'm fine," he says to Seamus, who pats him firmly on the back.

"Let's just get us to bed, why don't we."

"Yeah."

If he doesn't keep grinning like this, all that drink will slip straight and deep into him - right into that secondary voicebox that only knows four syllables, still - and he'll end up singing in the bathtub until he cries and everyone will pretend that he meant to do it at breakfast tomorrow. His head is spinning now. He takes the hand away from Harry's mouth and puts it in his pocket, sliding his fingers against eachother wetly.

"Good night," he says firmly.

* * *

><p>It's about then that Ron wants to go back home. He doesn't even have to tell anyone; they all just know it, and let him pack up his things without a word.<p>

"Till next month," says Seamus earnestly. "Give my best to Neville and all them."

"Yeah."

"Don't let your mum talk your ear off or nothing."

Then Harry steps forward and everyone's got something to say except Ron. He waits for them all to finish embracing and making assurances to eachother; then his mind floats up and out the window like smoke, can't stop it, but the next time he blinks it's like another dream starts. There's a carton of strawberry milk in his palm.

"...What's this supposed to be for?"

"I thought it'd look nice in your hands," Luna tells him. Then her mouth unfolds into a sleepy smile, and she touches his arm again just like before - scars from the Mysteries. He can't even think of what to say back. He furrows his brow at her instead.

"All right. Err, thanks."

Luna has big eyes like jewels in a necklace. Ron doesn't like how patient they are; it's unnatural. Instead he looks at the bridge of her nose, which is a trick Harry taught him, except sometimes his eyes slip up to the crown of bottlecaps on her head. Everything about her is white light and alcohol, or sunshine at the beach: at least for a moment it burns enough that he doesn't think about anything. He doesn't even think to ask why she's in Ireland. He doesn't think at all.

"There's something else inside that you might like better," she finally says.

Ron looks down at his hands. He furrows his brow, closes his mouth. "Okay."

"Farewell, Ronald."

* * *

><p>He and Harry are quiet all the way home, except for once when Ron dozes off and thinks he's been left on the train. When he opens the milk carton, it just turns into a bunch of white chocolate frogs. <em>I dunno<em>.

Ginny looks thinner now. When she's thinner, she looks more like Percy. Her teeth seem bigger and her cheeks more gaunt, and her eyes flash when she tries to say she's missed them, cos there are tears in there that can't keep from falling out. Harry sucks in a breath and holds out his arms to her reverently. The two of them embrace for six years until they remember Ron. He tries to put his arms around both of them, too, but he just ends up eye-to-eye with Harry over the curve of her copper head. Harry's eyes are smiling.

"Don't go away again like that, not ever," Ginny warns, muffled. "I've been alone here with mum. She's driving me mad."

Harry takes Ron back up to his room after dinner so slowly, slow motionly - like in muggle films. Sometimes it's beautiful, sometimes hilarious: like magic or anything else. It would be a lie to say he hasn't learned anything from this. They are walking underwater, or maybe it's just him: could be just like the other night, when all the air and drink turned to nothing inside of him.

The room is still orange, blurry with movement on the walls. Sick bright color, stupid color. There are the books still, which is the first thing he really sees: they're untouched, spines exposed. He runs fingers over them all. He pretends to yawn - half-hazard, boyish - so that the tears will look less like tears, but Harry shakes his head at that.

"It's all right, Ron."

"I dunno. I should put those back away somewhere. I could give them to her mum and dad."

"Why?"

"I dunno."

"I don't want you to give away her books," Harry says finally. Ron reckons that if anyone should say so, it's him; so that's the night they finally go through them all. They move the pile down to the middle of the floor and sit side-by-side, arms pressed together.

There are a lot of papers tucked in between the pages. He flinches away from each and every one, as if they could hurt them - and they do. There's ink on all of them, little notes, bits and pieces of words and thoughts and even Hellos - little Come Back to Earths - in his own crooked handwriting. It's like having her back, and it isn't. It isn't her. Months from when she touched these things, it's like she never did at all. Just another ghost in the coma. This one kisses him until he dies again, but there aren't any more tears after that. He and Harry manage to finish. They even laugh, at little places where her words slur and drag out in sleep - little doodles of constellations and imaginary plant life - a heart, and one letter.

_**R.**_

* * *

><p>No drink tonight.<p>

"You've drunk enough," Harry says.

They sit on Ron's bed and play chess for the first time in months. It's the best way to keep from saying too much, or too little.


	3. 3

"I'm going."

Dad nods and George sort of makes a noise in the back of his throat. Bill is braiding Fleur's blinding goddess hair. Percy is staring listlessly into a blank journal page. Harry's the only one who looks up, really, and he smiles in a way Ron's siblings don't manage anymore. They've all gotten too used to this, so they let him do what he likes; even mum, who just looks sad and doesn't say anything. It's easier than making him stay.

"Right," Charlie says supportively. See?

But "Jus gonna leave us like that then?" is Seamus.

Yes. Away Ron goes, with his lemonade, far away from Muggle Beach Day and his family turning pink under the sun.

He's down by the water, letting it lick him, eat him up to the shin. It's still too cold to wade in, but the sun is torturous hot. It holds him by the neck and shakes his head up so it sparkles like one of dad's snowglobes, swirling, only there's nothing in the middle. Hollow log, cavernous hollow of a hollow of a hole in a heart. Not even a tinkling little bell song to make up for what's gone.

_I wanna be loved by you. Just you, and nobody else but you._

No matter what he does it doesn't go away.

After too long Ron lies on his back in the sand, as far from everyone as he can get - so there are no voices, none, nothing but ocean and sky screaming, light grasping him mercilessly by the chin. It distracts him from what needs distracting from. His eyes are closed and they've been closed for what seems like hours - days? - or months. Six months. But he might as well be staring anyway.

He slips back into sleep again.

* * *

><p><em>I wanna be loved by you, alone.<em>

So much sand. It's holding him so close, so warm, pushing up on the sore muscles, and above and below everything goes on forever and ever like what-if and should-have-been. Presses him up to the sky, back to the earth. Sparks float and prick behind his eyes.

"Oh, poor Ronald," Luna is saying. Her smile is sleepy, slow; he can hear it in her voice, which seems to stroke him down the spine like small hands. "You've got freckles like perfect stars. All of you is freckles."

Ron's eyes don't open. It makes no difference really. He opens his mouth though, to sigh toward the shimmering gap in his periphery where Luna is sitting, bird-like and incurably herself.

"All right."

"I like them. And you know, the thing about freckles..." Luna pauses; he imagines her pursing her thin pinky mouth. She leans into the silence between them. Ron feels her move, swaying gently in the windless space. It's like that for what feels like an hour. The smell of her is nutty and sweet, like candied almonds, but there's something sharper peeking out from below. It's familiar: gives him that same feeling, just how he felt when they had to go through all the things in that lonely trunk someone left in Ginny's room. Never came back for it. You'd think they would've; there were so many brainy books in there. Not easy to resist. Ron's got them all lined up against the wall in his bedroom, even if he'll never read them even once; all he ever did was check the inside covers to see if they really belonged to that girl he knew.

Girl he loved.

That's the feeling Luna smells like.

Ron clears his throat. He opens his eyes just enough, tired holes to catch the edge of her silhouette; but all that's there is the sun lighting up around her head so bright it hurts, and his eyes close again.

No answer.

"_Freckles_," Ron repeats tersely.

"Oh, yes. Well - Fairies must have kissed you," she tells him after a moment, so carefully. "When you were a baby. That's how you got them all."

"I don't want to know what kissed you, then."

Luna does laugh. It's little, like the rest of her voice, but it echoes in his broken head. She touches one of the scars on his left arm. "Your milky way."

"Isn't someone looking for you?" Ron asks rudely.

"Maybe." A cold bottle is pressed into his side. "Look, Seamus sends his love to you."

* * *

><p>Later Harry finds him where he lies. He takes Ron by the hand and drags him up, then presses his fingers tight and tighter, pokes him in the ribs until Ron opens his eyes again. They laugh brusquely, then start their way down the beach together, walking close.<p>

It's the first time Ron has noticed: Harry's almost his height now. They're bashing heads together clumsily as they go. Everything is so grey, strange. He rubs desperately at his eyes to see sparks again.

"Where'd Luna go?"

"I don't know."

Ron ponders this for a moment, then stops. He reaches up to touch his face: it feels like it's floating away from him inch by inch, all his thoughts, everything solid. "Hey. D'you know what's wrong with me, Harry?"

"Nothing's wrong with you, Ron." They're holding hands again. Maybe they never stopped - he's not sure, but he won't let go because there's nothing else to be done. "No one expects you to be all right, you know. I don't think any of us are really."

It's a good thing when they get back: everything is silent, so full of sleep. It's like the emptiness in him, when there's no one to look sorry or make him say things he doesn't mean. Harry's the only one he doesn't mind anymore; maybe cos they used to hold up the sky together, though it fell with the third pillar. They still stand where they were placed years ago.

Then something occurs to Ron. He furrows his brow. "..._Did you forget me on the beach_?"

Harry laughs; it comes out something odd, a little crooked, so very familiar. "No. We didn't want to wake you. Bill's isn't too far, anyway. We were always just up the dunes."

"You_ did_ forget me."

"_I_ forgot you," says a voice in the darkness. Seamus nods to them, laughing, from the stairs. His eyes are bright and wicked: just like the ones on his patronus, with its foxish face. He's always had a look about him, even before all this; something a little sharp, like in Luna, the furious whispers cradling her aura. Everything now is a whisper, just small moments between dreaming that never string together right. Ron closes his eyes and opens them again when Harry drops his hand; one more time with the taste of beer on his tongue and it drowns the perfect wound that's opened. Still opening.

Seamus is telling them how he's got insomnia, he's had it since he was seven, and you can't be alive when you're sleeping anyway. "So drink more, it offends me when you say no."

More more, boys' babble, it all echoes so strongly in the hollow till Ron doesn't know what they're talking about anymore.

"Come with me back home," Seamus says at last, an afterthought. "I reckon it's gotta be better for you than this. We can have a real good time. Get you away from what's ailin' you."

"Yes," says Harry, for both of them. Harry, who is expected to start his auror's training in three weeks.

But in three weeks they're in Ireland.


	4. 2

"Ron," says Ginny. He hears her sit, then stand again, then set the tray down quietly. But Ron doesn't care: he'll never eat again. Why should he? Nothing works anymore. No nourishment for what's rotten. He'll only nourish what's dead. A piece of wood.

"Ron. _Ron_."

Even his teeth are grieving.

Still, she stays for a moment; he can see her tired face even with his eyes locked shut.

"I know you're not asleep," she says in her Nurse Ginny voice. "You've never once been anytime I've come in. But I'll tell mum that you are anyway."

"I am asleep."

"You aren't."

"I am bloody asleep."

And it all felt like a dream, too. It still does. That's what no one understands. Even ten minutes after it was over, Ron remembers standing alone next to the wall, breathing down deep in his belly. Bodies had collected against the mossy stone. Harry was there, and so were some of his brothers. Nobody would touch him. He saw Seamus, and also Dean, but the only one who came near was Luna. She looked down at the earth by his feet and then up to his numb face, and she smiled at him. Ron smiled back. After that he couldn't stop smiling, and then he woke up here. He's been here for four days. Five? Possibly seven.

Maybe they wouldn't touch him cos they knew he was dead too, caught in a limbo cos it was time to pay for all his I-dunnoing. All the touches in the world don't matter when you're in limbo. There was a girl who would've told him he was crazy for even considering the logistics. When he thinks about her, it's like feeling for a tumor. Ron never left the wall. He's still there, turning into a tree.

"Fine," his sister says. He waits until she's gone and then he rolls over, pulling his arms up over his head. Dead. Dead tree. Feel the insects eat your deadness. And little animals give birth in your dead brain.

"Good night, Ginny."

He lies there until it gets dark. He listens to his family downstairs. He dares them to come up and talk to him again. He doesn't know if he falls asleep for real, but at some point he opens his eyes and the tray is gone.

All the thoughts only point two places.

* * *

><p>"Ron," says Ginny.<p>

"No," he mumbles.

* * *

><p>"Ron. I brought George."<p>

"Wakey wakey."

This time he does look at them both, and he takes his time - they're islands, and he's drifting, but Ginny doesn't make him want to swim. George makes him want to eat the raft.

"Ron," she starts again, but his finger lifts almost imperceivably, and somehow that's _no_ again.

_No, Ginny._

"Fine," she says, wiping furiously at her eyes with the back of a hand.

No wonder it's like dreaming: it's always the same, the same words, and Ginny's eyes are just like George's, which are just like Fred's, which are just like mum's.

* * *

><p>It takes nearly two weeks, but eventually Ron sits up. He has to think about it for a hard minute, but he swings his feet over the edge of the bed and touches the floorboards with them. <em>You've got to stop thinking of this<em>, a little voice says, cos when he does he just feels stupid, and it takes away from the wholeness of his pain. He can't let go of it, not even for a second, or it's like closing the door on his best friend.

Or not.

Ron's best friend is Harry, and Harry comes in every day to look at him. Sometimes Harry will say a couple of words, but Ron closes the door on him even without leaving the bed. So if that's not really so difficult, why is the rest of it? Because she's gone. There's an empty socket in his body where she used to fit, so comfortable, so perfect in the grand scheme of every and all things living. But Ron can't do anything about it except try to breathe underwater.

"So you're up then? Oh - you're up." Harry says this time. He's looking in sheepishly from the hallway, like a miniature of himself: miniature square hands, miniature glasses. Ron grimaces at him. Then there's another hard minute where he thinks about going back into the bed, but then he sees Harry's eyes are shining so hopefully, and he has to nod. There's no one like Harry - ever - so Ron smiles too, very small, with nothing of himself behind it. Harry sees the nothing but doesn't leave.

"Yeah," Ron confirms.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Don't tell mum yet."

"Is it... Are you...?"

Ron shrugs. Harry flounders for a moment, touching his mouth with a yellowish hand, and steps cautiously into the room. He gawks at Ron as if Ron really has been dead - maybe even for years. Longer than some people. Then he blinks.

"I've missed you, mate."

"Yeah." Ron must've missed Harry, too. It's hard to look at him because of that. But what does he know? "I didn't go anywhere."

He feels his smile grow wider. Nearly as pointless as eating, smiling is.

And doesn't it seem like it should be so straightforward, when you lose people? When Parvati died that's how it was: she was there, but then she wasn't, and that's just how it was going to be. Something must have happened, two weeks and seven days or a thousand years ago; now Ron sees ghosts all the time, from every angle of his Cannons orange coma bedroom, night and day.

"Well," says Harry, who is still there. "Can I stay?"

"In here?" Ron pulls something scraggly over his head. It itches. Good.

"I mean - I don't have to. I just thought. Till you feel better."

Ron will never feel better, not really. He doesn't want to feel better either. It's that kind of common sadness, which fills the empty socket and makes it emptier - but somehow so complete, since nothing else will ever fit there.

* * *

><p>Harry leaves his bed, wherever it is. He makes a new nest on the floor near Ron's feet. And eventually Ron does leave the bedroom, and he goes downstairs, though he doesn't - can't - say much to anyone. He does what he's supposed to do, like breathe and sometimes laugh or nod, and mum lets him stay silent even when she presses him up against her bosom like a big ginger bone doll. Everyone's painted in color again, and the ocean between himself and the world seems to dry up if only a little; but nobody moves out of the Burrow again for a long time, and everything stays the way it is. Ginny and Harry are in love, Fred dies at Hogwarts, Percy comes home, Bill's always got Fleur, there's mum and there's dad, all of these things and even more: but Ron's still standing in a bunch of bloody grass near the wall.<p> 


	5. 1

He dreamed about it going a different way, but it doesn't matter now.

Their love story is always a story about growing up: never quite first or last or exemplary or even an example at all.

No. Never, not at all. Not until that last Tuesday.

Ron follows but isn't followed, even when she's holding his hand & they struggle over the wall together, pulling by nails and elbows and figurative teeth. One after another. Her thin fingers tangle behind his neck and he struggles to swing her up and over, all 60 kg of difficulty. He calls out to Harry, who's running on ahead; and for a moment Harry looks back, light flaring on lenses, and Ron's lips are pursed as he watches. Then Hermione collapses from the wall onto the ground next to him, swaying on her feet, and he's got to hold her up when she vomits. He's an example of something all right, a hard look & a soft one: now his insides are writhing and he's so angry but he has to laugh, he laughs just a little under his breath, with the softness all for her as she stumbles forward.

That's how it is: Harry's always running on ahead now they've made him promise never to stop, but Ron's still here. He's holding his girlfriend's hand, cooing inanely. Oh Merlin love my love hell Merlin Mione. For a moment they lean against the bricks together, wheezing, and he spits out a fat gob of phlegm. "We've got to hurry." It doesn't sound half as urgent as it should.

"I know," Hermione says. She's shaking her head. One side is wet with someone's blood; he looks at it and he thinks _not yours, not yours, not yours._

"You're making it a bit hard, aren't you?" He jokes to keep from whimpering.

They can hear the fighting going on in that house - next door - and nobody's followed, nobody's noticed their absence, so the moment becomes a long moment and then longer and longer, till they're standing in a miniature universe, a little landscape of time. That's what he says about it later: that it felt like everything stopped, everything except for them, and it was the happiest he'd been in days.

"Can you make it?" He asks her.

She doesn't say anything.

Ron touches her face gently then, gently as he can being Ron: all those dirty nails, callouses, a broken thumb. He kisses her on the brow, gets that blood on his lips. And he knows his voice isn't sounding much like his voice anymore, but he lowers it for her like he would to keep Harry from waking, and he tastes the air between them - crackling with magic, heavy soot and ash. "I'll carry you if I have to."

"I know," Hermione says again. They start after Harry, and Ron wants to move faster; he's taking big steps, dragging her along with him, and his wand hand's gone white at the knuckles. His heart jumps, screams.

Harry's gone into the trees. It's been nearly a minute since they last saw him - he could be out the other side already. But all Ron can do is hold Hermione up, hold her little elbow, then slip round her waist; the part of his brain that knows all those spells can't keep up with the remembering, and he would have her floating but he doesn't know how. All he can think of is how much he wants her to be alive - how amazing it is, her mumbling, shivering, as they reach the treeline. They trip over the roots together.

"Hell," Ron mutters. "Can we apparate?"

Hermione looks up at him. Her eyes are wide, worried, cos it's a problem she can't work out this time, no matter what. Not even if she could think clearly, and he knows she can't cos her steps cross eachother, her eyes cloud like they're steaming from the inside. She keeps making little noises against the fabric of his shirt.

"I'm sorry," He tells her. "I just dunno anymore."

Later he's going to wonder why he couldn't have thought of anything better; cos you know when it's all over it's so easy, he's coming up with a thousand eloquent goodbyes every time he stops to think, but then again as long as Hermione was breathing he could never believe she might stop. It didn't make sense.

"Ronald?" She asks him. She sounds tired now.

It may or may not be true that other people are coming over the wall; he doesn't know (_I dunno_) and he can't focus on them long enough to tell because he's looking at Hermione. He can't help looking at her. It seems like the most important thing in the world to be doing - the only thing he can do, could do, and it's always been so hard with her. She makes everything so hard.

Hermione only smiles at him with her bloody teeth, and their bubble shifts; then there's a lot of color, a lot of reds and greens and yellows, and for the rest of his life Ron has to think, some part of him is always thinking about how hard it really was.

How hard she really made it to let go of that hand once it went slack.


End file.
